VP Corporate Development Don Willoughby tells ResourceClips.com, “The assay results are great. We continue to get economic grades over good widths. The objective of the program is twofold. One is to expand the deposit, and the other is to upgrade from inferred to indicated the saprolitic layer from surface down to, on average, 50 metres. This is in preparation for completing a preliminary economic assessment. We’ve started the baseline work on that; we’ve started work on an environmental impact study. That’ll be done probably by sometime in the new year. We’ve just begun it, so we don’t really have a timetable for it yet. We’re informed that we’ll have the updated resource estimate by sometime in the latter part of 1Q 2012.

We haven’t hit the limits of the deposit yet, and we don’t think we’ve come close. So we just keep working and building a larger resource there—Don Willoughby

“Right now we’ve got RC and diamond drills—two rigs—both operating right now. That should be finished sometime at the beginning of December. The diamond rig will then be going to the Salbo permit; we’ve got 700 metres of core we’re going to do there. At the beginning of December, independent of those drill rigs, we’ll be doing some RAB drilling on Pompoi. The Pompoi permit is adjacent to Roxgold Inc’s TSXV:ROG Yaramoko discovery.

“Drill programs will be ongoing at Ronguen regardless of what happens vis-à-vis moving towards production,” Willoughby continues. “The PEA will be one milestone in the move to production. Based on the resource estimate done in 2008, Ronguen is a quarter-million ounces. We haven’t hit the limits of the deposit yet, and we don’t think we’ve come close. So we just keep working and building a larger resource there.

“We’re going on the expectation that we’ll be putting Ronguen into production. Having said that, it’s the nature of the junior exploration business that the big fish eat the little fish; and the little fish are happy to be eaten. So, if the right deal comes along, and remembering that every public company’s mandate to the shareholders is to make the money, we would do whatever was in the best interest of the shareholders.

“This is a significant resource, and it’s going to have a significant impact on Burkina Faso, just like all these other deposits that are heading towards production. Burkina Faso is going to do very well by gold mining. It’s already started. Give it 10 or 15 years, and you’re going to see 20 gold mines in production over there.

“The infrastructure is great at Ronguen. It’s located 90 kilometres north of the capital city, Ouagadougou, on paved highway, and three kilometres off of that on a gravel road. Our geologists and technical people all live in Ouagadougou and drive back and forth each day.”

Willoughby concludes, “At this point, it is more in the realm of a development project than it is an exploration project—although it still has exploration aspects to it. The real blue sky that we’ve got is the Pompoi permit next to Yaramoko. This is an excellent project. It shows no indications the deposit is in any way limited by the results that we’ve had so far. We’re just going to keep plugging away at it and try to build a company maker.”